Guayakí Yerba Mate - A Powerful Rainforest Experience

Reforestation

THROUGH BRAND BUILDING WE DRIVE REFORESTATION, SUPPORTING LOCAL COMMUNITIES AND THEIR CULTURE

Learn about Guayakí's Market-Driven-Restoration

With a passion for mate, we have pioneered an innovative business model that directly links our customer’s purchases to our partner farming communities in the South American Atlantic Rainforests. Our partners sustainably harvest organic yerba mate from rainforest grown cultivations and reforestation projects, generating a renewable income stream which enables these communities to improve their lives and restore their lands. Our restoration projects are primarily based in the lush yerba mate growing regions of Argentina, Paraguay and Southern Brazil.

We become intimately involved with our partnering farmers and encourage the cultivation under native rainforest trees. This promotes the preservation of forests, and in addition, we work with the farmers to reforest native hardwood species. Once a farmer agrees to partner with us, we provide technical advice on how to create nurseries, help them manage the organic growing process from cultivation through harvest and then buy what they produce. The farmers, in turn, must repopulate their rain forest with the native hardwood trees -- which restores the land to its original shaded, biodiverse state -- and provides a living wage and fair working conditions.

Looking at the map of the upper Parana forest, one of the ecoregions of the Atlantic Forest, shows the rampant, recent deforestation (95% of the Atlantic Forest has been deforested). Now, with a proven market for rainforest-grown yerba mate, we can begin to reforest this ecoregion with native, diverse mate forests. Yerba Mate is native to the Atlantic forest and forest grown mate is environmentally sustainable in the long term and provides for more income per acre than cattle or agricultural products such as corn, soy or wheat. It will take some time, but as consumers vote with their dollars, we funnel the dollars where they need to go: to the people who are stewarding their forests.

From the simple love of a beverage, Guayakí drinkers have become a driving force for conservation and community development by paying a fair trade price for their yerba mate.